Formatting

If you’re selling on Kobo (or trying to), perhaps you have come across the very vague problem of not being able to upload your books when you try to add them via WritingLife. Everything might seem fine, the book looks good on your pc, you’re able to read it without any issues on Calibre. You may have even uploaded it to Amazon and it’s gone through just fine.

And then on Step 2 of the book creation process on Kobo, it falls flat and tells you “Sorry, we could not upload your file” or something similar. There is no explanation, no specific error code, just this vague and frustrating message. All this makes it hard to figure out if Kobo are experiencing technical issues or if it is indeed your ebook file that is at fault.

Here are some pointers and common causes for this issue:

Your file contains references to other ebook retailers. For example, somewhere you’ve got a link to an Amazon listing of your book, or perhaps your Amazon Author central profile. Take it out and link to your own website or blog instead!

Your file has some sort of error in it. For example if you’re uploading an Epub file, check that it is fully valid and does not fail EpubCheck! If this doesn’t work, try uploading a different format.

If you are sure the file is perfect, and does not have links to Amazon or other retailers in it. And you have even tried converting it to another format (from Epub into Mobi using Calibre for example) and it still doesn’t work, you might want to get in touch with Kobo support. We’ve found them to be quite helpful with most issues and have received responses on average within 24 hours or less.